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Charity in the European Empires, 1500-1750: a Comparative Sketch"

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Charity in the European Empires, 1500-1750: a Comparative Sketch "Charity in the European Empires, 1500-1750: a Comparative Sketch" Isabel dos Guimaraes Sá In the account of his voyage to Africa and South America from 1695 to 1697, the French engineer François Froger wrote: "I knew one [slave owner] living in Martinico, who being of a compassionate Nature, could not find in his heart to cut off his Slave's Leg, who had run away four or five times, but to the end he might not again run the risque of losing him altogether, he bethought himself of fastening a Chain to his neck, which triling down backwards, catches up his leg behind, as main be seen by the cut: And this, in the space of two or three years, does so contract the nerves, that it would be impossible for this slave to make use of his leg. And thus, without running the Hazard of this unhappy wretch's death, and without doing him any mischief, he thereby deprived him of the means to make his escapei." This excerpt, albeit short, includes the features we commonly associate with Empire: possession and dispossession of local or imported populations. In this context of indifference towards suffering caused to others, the words "compassionate nature" strike the modern reader as outrageous, and claim further analysis. My work will try to discuss, albeit tentatively, the discourses on charity to be found in the different Western Empires and the way they reflect on charitable action. The magnitude of comparison makes me well aware of the risks I am taking, and the only reason I dare to give this paper before an audience of experts is because it is the most likely to give me back some useful criticisms. I also would like to state, if this excuses me of any pretensions, that this research is still in its first stage, and so, this is the most crucial moment to listen to suggestions. I am concerned with organizational features that belong to religious cultures of charity and so, my main departing point will be Europe. Here I do not consider Europe in its various kingdoms or other political units that gave origin to Overseas Empires, but as divided according to the religious Reformations 1 that take place during the sixteenth century. In recent years, historiography on charity has rediscovered the centrality of religious beliefs in the framing of charitable practices. Authors such as Carter Lindberg, Ole Peter Grell and Andrew Cunningham have tried to add a different perspective to the works of the seventies by authors such as Natalie Zemon Davies or Brian Pullan. These claimed that differences between Catholics and Protestants were not that striking concerning their practices of charityii. Even more recently, some authors have pointed out the pervading notions of community in the shaping of charitable action. I am referring to the volume With Us Always. A History of Private Charity and Public Welfare edited by Donald T. Critchow and Charles H. Parkeriii, which takes further the "religious approach" I referred to previously. It is precisely the "community approach" that I want to follow here: how ideas of who belongs or not to the community decide who gets help and who is not entitled to it in colonial societies, who, by definition, mix different populations to different degrees. I will try to explore the main obsessions that pervade discourses on charity as I can detect them in travel accounts and other non-serial sources. In so doing, I do not mean that such obsessions are unique to a particular Empire, only that they are more frequent in some of them than others. Before I proceed I would like to say a word about the sources I chose to work on and the way I used them. I read travel accounts precisely because of their unreliable nature. Authors observe foreign lands and peoples according to their cognitive models: it is not what those travelers saw that interests me, but how they interpreted "evidence" and transmitted it to the implied reader. They were reporting on other cultures (in this case I used Europeans describing spaces transformed by European presence) and in most cases translating themselves and not the objects of their remarks. Travel accounts provide a diversity that few historical sources are liable to create: multiple cross views of different objects. They form a privileged view point to observe differences within European cultures at work in alien lands in a competitive framework. These voyagers were agents of Empire, trying to amass new riches and territories to their sovereigns (and often also to themselves) at the expense of other Europeans. Remarks about charity participate in such competition: travelers use charity as testimony to the humanity or lack of it of their competitors. So, my trust in travel accounts as historical sources derives precisely from their unreliability as texts describing "reality". 2 Charity according to religion: the Protestant challenge The basic principles of charity in the West are stated in the Bible, namely in the New Testament. The Gospel of Matthew in its chapter 25 describes the Final Judgement in what is to be one of the most influential texts concerning charity. The Lord is to separate the good from the bad, like a shepherd divides the sheep from the goats, goats on the left and sheep on the right. 34 "Then shall the king say to them on his right hand: Come, you blessed of my father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. 35 for I was hungry and you gave me meat, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you took me in; 36 naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me". This text was the basis for the seven corporal works of mercy defined in the Late Middle Ages to which the seven spiritual works of mercy were added: altogether, these fourteen precepts were to supply Christians with a vocabulary for the practices of charity. Ever since, at least in the Catholic countries, the works of mercy formed a part of doctrine and catechism, just as the commandments or the mortal sins. Because charity was contiguous to salvation in the New Testament, it was to acquire a dual nature that mirrored the existing binary concept of what we call today a human being, as formed of an inferior and devaluated part (the body) and a higher one (the soul). That is why we will find in many institutions of charity a concern with purifying the souls rather than caring for bodies. Bodies were the ephemeral prisons of the soul, creating perpetual obstacles to its salvation. In this understanding of charity, there was a strong emphasis on the redemptive power of almsgiving: alms erase sins like water extinguishes fire (these metaphors are from the Ecclesiasticus, 3: 30). Of course, not all peoples in Europe had a strong belief in the properties of almsgiving: we can detect a very strong méfaisance towards beggars even before Luther advocated a close control upon begging and almsgiving. Central European best-sellers casting doubt on the true poverty of beggars like the Narrenschif (Ship of fools), first published in 1494, enjoyed successive translations and publications until the end of the Thirty Years Wariv; even in areas later to abide to the Roman Church, opinions concerning almsgiving varied among theologists. Despise for beggars explains 3 why Luther was to write a preface for the Liber Vagatorum in 1528 exhorting Christian princes and common men to keep a close eye on false beggars. The book was intended as a dictionary of words used by treacherous beggars and thus had the purpose of teaching rightful Christians how to avoid being wronged. Luther states: "Truly, such Beggar's Cant has come from the Jews, for many Hebrew words occur in the Vocabulary, as any one who understands that language may perceive."v So, in his mind, false beggars used Hebrew words: Luther did not merely intend to unmask them; he was also drawing the boundaries of community. Protestantism would undermine some of the beliefs central to the practices of Late Medieval charity: no belief in the Purgatory and thus no masses for the dead; no belief in transubstantion and thus no sacrificial character of the mass; no confession and thus no forgiving of sins. If Catholics continued to view charity as concerned with the living and the dead, bequeathing lavishly to the post-mortem care of their own souls, Protestants kept to practices of charity strongly anchored in the realm of the living. For any Protestant Church, charity was not about eternal salvation but about being a worthy Christian obliging to the duties towards his or her neighborvi. On the other hand, although in theory the Protestant churches would be open to all and proselytism encouraged, the notions of community were in practice much more restrictive. Protestant areas kept to the ideal of eliminating almsgiving and thus vagrancy, concerns we can find either in Luther, the English Poor Laws or the Calvinist diaconates. Charity was more and more concerned about the inward communities, and recent studies suggest that, in cities with multiple religious communities, the tendency was to practice denominational charity instead of more encompassing civic charityvii. On result of the suspicion concerning private almsgiving (that was largely derived from criticism to voluntary poverty of mendicant orders) the emphasis on work became a particular feature of Protestant charity: the poor were to be provided with the means to earn their living and avoid the help of others. This concern was not of course exclusive to Protestant areas, and attempts were made to set the poor to work in Catholic countries: but nowhere was it as recurrent as in the former.
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